1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to viral proteins.
2. Related Art
The M2 protein from the influenza A virus, an acid-activated proton-selective channel, has been the subject of numerous conductance, structural, and computational studies. However, little is known at the atomic level about the heart of the functional mechanism for this tetrameric protein, a His37-Trp41 cluster. The structure of a similar construct of this protein solubilized in detergent micelles as further described in J. R. Schnell, J. J. Chou, Nature 451, 591 (2008), failed to explain the main observations on M2 proton conductance and also generated artifacts that were likely to be a result of the detergent environment used for that structural characterization.